Shroud Of The Avatar - Shit Went Persistent

Watched a documentary on Garriott a while back. He had a spot booked on the original russian space flight in the early 2000s, but the dotcom crash of the late 90s damn near broke him, and he had to sell his seat to someone else. Obviouslly he made some money back and was able to buy a seat a few years later for double the original price(think it upped from 5 to 10 mil, or 10 to 20, something like that), so he's definitely doing well now. Him and his dad became the first American Father/Son duo in space(his dad was a NASA astronaut back in the 60s and 70s).

That being said, I love the Ultima series, the first one I ever played was 4(Quest of the Avatar), and my favorite was probably 7(Black Gate). Ultima really shit the bed with 8 and 9 but both of those were made after Origin was acquired by EA, so I'm not sure if it was EAs influence that shitted them up, or if Garriott has lost touch with the gaming community. I hope it's the former.

Also Ultima Online is still the best sandbox MMO to date, I still play it occasionally on free user-run servers, a good 15+ years after the original release. I definitely can't say that about EQ or WoW or any other MMO I spent a lot of time with.

Well, the name certainly is terrible.

Cause he is so rich and famous they probally raise 2 million and some and only asking for 1 million, hell they are already at 150k almost in few mins lol.

*cough money grab *cough.

Rich people don't get and stay rich by spending their own money on risky business ventures if they can help it. Why would he spend even a dime of his own money in capital when he can leverage the cult of personality and his past successes to fund his new venture?

true.

On the other hand, it is also a way to get feedback on what the public wants to see.
A poll wont really get answers.


It removes the risk as noted. for better or worse..
Imagine Curt, had put up a kickstarter saying he needed $400m to make an mmo.
Well that would have avoided a GIANT cockup, wouldn't it have?

I don't think he's stupid for taking advantage of idiots, it's the retards actually throwing him money that blow my mind.

Game looks like it could be a breath of fresh air in the current rpg market. Hopefully this kickstarter succeeds, I'd like to see how this turns out.

"In a nod to Garriott's early RPG works, Shroud of the Avatar is split up into a high-level overland map and adventure scenes. Scenes are generally re-playable and can be experienced solo or with others."

What does this even mean? and is that good or bad?

It sounds like another phrasing for overworld with dungeons attached, not that I have much of a clue about it really.

Lord British should forget doing a kickstarter for this shitty game and focus instead on developing the Brain Wipe technology he used to make people forget that the last social-living-community-immersive-customizey-RPG-with-your-friends he made was Tabula Fucking Rasa: possibly the worst online game I ever had the misfortune of buying. If this was strictly a single-player RPG in the style of the classic Ultimas I might be willing to forgo previous transgressions. But as it is - no fucking way!

Yeah. I don't really get the hate. doubt, I can understand.

Its been a good while since hes made a good game.

Ultima online 1997
Produced lineage in 98. Directed Ultima 9 in 99, produced Lineage 2 in 2003, Produced City of Heroes in 2004, villains 2005, Tabular Rasa in 2007.

And yeah. Im passing on this one for sure. Beta access is the only reason for it. and meh to that. Its not even a promise of cash in the cast store post release.

Drinsic_sl said:

I don't think he's stupid for taking advantage of idiots, it's the retards actually throwing him money that blow my mind.

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Kickstarter has been riding pretty high on the wave of nostalgia the past year: Shadowrun, Wasteland, Planescape, etc. He'd be stupid to not try to leverage some of the nostalgia factor associated with his name when so many others have done so well.

Caliane_sl said:

Yeah. I don't really get the hate. doubt, I can understand.

Its been a good while since hes made a good game.

Ultima online 1997
Produced lineage in 98. Directed Ultima 9 in 99, produced Lineage 2 in 2003, Produced City of Heroes in 2004, villains 2005, Tabular Rasa in 2007.

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To be fair, the same argument Tim Schafer and Chris Avellone have made applies to this project as well. Big studios just don't feel there's any audience for these types of adventure games, and until Kickstarter, it wasn't really possible to get the funding for one. Of course, in the case of Schafer and Avellone, they have proven they still know what they're doing as they have launched a few successful games over the past decade. I think Garriott stepped away from being a developer for too long to really have the same level of trust, especially considering his most recent game (ie the only game he's been a designer for in over a decade) was an unsuccessful mess that took six years to launch.

Garriott's producer role for Lineage I and II was just NCsoft buying credibility in the US market.

I'm in for sure. I worked for the guy for awhile, and grew up with his games.

I just hope he finds some good people. In the early days he had some legendary mega-brains working for him. Ken Demarest, Zack Simpson, and Tony Bratton are the ones I know, really brilliant people they really were lucky to have. The later Ultimas really were missing some superstar programming (8 and 9).

I bet that its a lot easier to get additional funding if you have a massively over-funded kickstarter to help convince people that the final product will sell.

Caliane_sl said:

Yeah. I don't really get the hate. doubt, I can understand.

Its been a good while since hes made a good game.

Ultima online 1997
Produced lineage in 98. Directed Ultima 9 in 99,

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Let me be very clear as someone who worked at NC soft from 2k3 to 2k11 RG, had next to nothing to do with anything concerning Lineage and beyond. That production credit is complimentary and meaningless. At best his name generated money but thats it. TR originally was some unicorns in disc-world with bards that killed by music. What you got in TR was Long, Sage and crew from Ultima 9 fumbling in the dark to understand a genre they pretty much universally hated. RG was going to space, there is no time for games! SPACE. I doubt the man has spent a single week obsessed over playing a game since the early 90s, its all been space ships and nonsense. This is a last ditch effort for him to continue funding Portalarium so he doesnt have to go get a real job. The game will be incredibly metrics driven and will be a bore.

Utnayan_sl said:

I love it when Gazillionaires have the audacity to ask for kickstarter funds to make their shitty games.

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It's called OPM. The rich get off on making money by using other people's money instead of their own.